The Last Hive Mind was written for conductor Glen Adsit and the Foot in the Door Ensemble at The Hartt School. Inspired by several episodes of the British TV series Black Mirror and the general idea of recent increasing debate around the artificial intelligence and how it will affect our daily lives as human being, I put some of my personal thoughts, standin...
Fanfare after Seventeenth Century Dances
Donal Michalsky
Born: 1928, Pasadena, CA
Died: 1975
Composed: 1965
Duration: 8 minutes
Donal Michalsky was a native Californian. Born and raised in Pasadena, he received his DMA from the University of Southern California, studying theory with Halsey Stevens and composition with Ingolf Dahl. After completion of his studies, he chose to remain in the Golden State, teaching composition at Cali...
Chinese-born composer Xi Wang has been considered one of the most talented and active composers of her generation. Her original concert music has been performed worldwide by notable orchestras and ensembles such as the Minnesota Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Shanghai Philharmonic, Spokane Symphony, Voices of Change, Soli Chamber Ensem...
Stucky wrote Funeral Music for Queen Mary (after Henry Purcell) in 1991 for Los Angeles Philharmonic, who premiered the work on Feb. 6, 1992, in Los Angeles.
Stucky offers the following regarding his composition:
“It was at the suggestion of Esa-Pekka Salonen that I transcribed this music of Purcell for Los Ange...
Three Comments on War was commissioned by the Southern Division of the College Band Directors National Association. The melody that serves as “Chorale” of the first movement, an anonymous secular French ballad of antiquity is the folk song “Jean Renaud,” which tells the story of a mortally wounded king who comes home to die. His mo...
As part of our "Immigrants I" program on October, UMWO will perform Hindemith's "Septet", a piece of extremely unique character and instrumentation, which was quite popular in Hindemith's own time. Hindemith wrote it as a newly minted American Citizen, but while traveling back to his homeland following the War. As such, this piece is the work of a true...
Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for his debut opera Silent Night, Kevin Puts has been hailed as one of the most important composers of his generation. Critically acclaimed for a richly colored, harmonic, and freshly melodic musical voice that has also been described as “emotional, compelling, and relevant,” his works, which include two operas,...
When Robert Rumbelow approached me to write a piece for wind ensemble for this wonderful consortium commission, I was really delighted, as I had been thinking of a piece for these forces for some time and was eager to try some of the acoustic things that I do in my piec...
On the same day that his father, King Maximilian II died, on March 10th 1864, Ludwig II was crowned as his successor, aged 18. Several years previously, in 1861, he had heard Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” and “Lohengrin”, which was the beginning of an almost “addictive” affinity to his music. Immediately after acceding to the throne, Ludwig II s...
